


Turnover

by eledae



Series: Hivesong [3]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Domestic Fluff, Emo-Fluff, Established Relationship, Ghosts, M/M, Massage, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28336872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eledae/pseuds/eledae
Summary: After a tough night’s work, ghost-hunter Jeong Yunho sheds the memories of a haunting under the skilled hands of old friend (and new boyfriend) Song Mingi, but finds that the past can be the most persistent ghost of them all.
Relationships: Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi
Series: Hivesong [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855714
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	Turnover

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a short epilogue to Wrap around me, and can be read without first reading Ugly Butterfly Club, although it makes brief reference to a couple of events in that story.
> 
> I wrote it a while back when Ugly Butterfly Club was getting too sad on me, to remind myself that there were brighter days to come for these two, even if they’re still figuring a few things out together. Wishing that too, for all of y’all - happier and better days ahead <3

When Yunho finally drags himself out of the claw-footed bathtub at Bird’s, Yeosang’s left him a pile of clothes from the spare set he keeps at the shrine. His body is still aching despite the relaxing warmth, but he’s tired enough that he’s woken up with his head slipping underwater more than once. For now, he just wants to take his sore, sorry ass home. Back in the day, he’d been happy to lounge around eating whatever Seonghwa had rustled up for breakfast, but Yeosang doesn’t cook, and home — well, these days home is where he most wants to be.

He collects up the filthy pile of clothes he’d been wearing on the hunt. The mud and cobwebs are going to wash off, but he’s not sure what else he’s collected while he was crawling around under the foundations of the old apartment building. At least he doesn’t smell like whatever shit’s seeped into the elbows of his shirt any more.

He says his goodbyes to the reluctant shrinekeeper, still in place until Seonghwa gets back from wherever he’s run off to on Hongjoon’s mystery mission, and heads down the hill into Lowtown. It’s going to be another hot day. Even this early, when the sky’s still hazy silver with dawn, a shimmer of heat is already hanging over the city walls.

His tiny one-room apartment is in Redbarn, all the way out towards the edge of Lowtown, though the city’s spreading into what used to be orchards and farmland. There are still enough roosters around to wake up the locals each morning, but only just. It’s too bad, seeing as how he moved here to be out amongst the green; the only thing he ever missed about Hivesong was the gardens. 

Well, perhaps not the only thing. But he’s managed to steal the only other thing that mattered from under Hivesong’s watchful eye, still not quite sure how. He’s scared it’s some sort of fairytale charm that’s going to unravel come midnight and rob his magical shoes out from under him but so far… so far, his luck’s held.

He stops in at the fruit shop under the apartment to see what he can scrounge for breakfast. Mingi’s probably got him something, but better to be safe, just in case he’s eaten it himself. Again. The beautiful, impossible asshole that he is.

Jeongin’s hauling in crates of apples and pears, but it’s the basket of black cherries that catches his eye. He’s still got credit there after helping Jeongin’s grandma with a ghost problem, so he takes a couple of handfuls of cherries along with an apple turnover, still warm from the oven.

Jeongin catches his eye as he’s about to head back upstairs, and gives him his sternest look. “Yunho, don’t you dare embarrass me in front of my customers again. Seriously, whatever you’re going to do, however loud you’re planning to be, do it quick, we open in an hour.” He’s like Jongho; he’s young, but he’s scary. Yunho’s half embarrassed - half proud - okay, half embarrassed. It’s Mingi’s fault he’s noisy. Seriously, it’s not his fault.

He doesn’t bother trying to keep quiet on the stairs because Mingi’s such a light sleeper, he’ll wake up at the sound of the key. Sure enough, the nest of blankets is stirring when he comes in, and a flushed, drowsy face emerges from the warm cocoon, eyes still firmly clamped shut on the morning light. The elegantly pointed nose scents the air.

“Apple turnover,” he says in his husky morning voice, with just a hint of a smile. “I approve.”

Yunho leans on the door to kick off his boots. His heart’s already doing the crazy dance it does when he gets anywhere near Mingi, improbably back in his life after four long, ridiculous and miserable years apart. In his actual bed, even, looking like a giant snuggly cocoon made of sin. “Tell me I’m more than a food delivery service to you.”

“You also keep me toasty warm. C’mere and do your real job, dumbass.” One eye cracks open and studies him. Mingi can’t read auras, but he can read Yunho. “Tough one, huh? Are you done with him now?”

“Yeah, we got him. I just dropped him off for Bird. Yeosang says hi.”

There’s a muffled snort from the blankets. “His exact words?”

Yunho deepens his voice, throws in the slight, cute lisp. “You look like you just crawled out of a grave. Go wash up and tell that freeloader he’d better give you a massage afterwards.”

Mingi’s already pulling open the nest of bedding and reaching for the bottle of oil they keep by the bed. Gods, he’s sleeping in long sleeves, it’s crazy how he feels the cold, especially when Yunho’s working nights. Also, how does he look so stupidly hot with his hair sticking up any which way, in a worn grey sleeping shirt - Yunho’s shirt, _again_ \- that covers him up like that? Just the suggestion of his body, the way the shirt tightens against him when he moves, it’s enough to short-circuit Yunho’s brain, to wake up that need to touch, to explore. Kinda wants to lick him all over like he’s made of spun-sugar candy, to be honest. He’s drop-dead exhausted, but somehow, somehow, this is all it takes. Fucking pitiful. Jeongin, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be quieter this time, promise.

Belatedly it registers that Mingi’s taking him at his word about the massage. “Hey, no, you don’t have to, that was Yeosang asking, not me, I’m fine.”

Mingi’s smile turns into a yawn that he smothers with the back of his hand. “Hush your mouth. Not gonna live up to his low expectations. Let me prove him wrong.” 

Yunho surrenders to the gravitational pull, drops down onto the mattress next to him and gets a sleepy kiss, almost too drowsy to find its mark. Just a warm press of full lips to the corner of his mouth, Mingi more or less leaning against his face, still half asleep. Yunho can feel him smile against his cheek. “Besides, I like touching you. I wanna touch you.” He’s already unbuttoning Yunho’s shirt, too relentless for argument, despite having just woken up. And Yunho’s whole body is so, so tired but he can feel the lure of the bed and Mingi’s skillful hands and yeah, he wants to be touched too, that sounds like the best idea ever. Breakfast can wait.

He unbuttons his trousers and slides them off slowly, feeling the pull of sore muscles. It’s still new enough, the two of them, that he feels a rush of his old habitual shyness getting naked in front of him, feels the embarrassment heating him up to the tips of his ears, but the look on Mingi’s face chases that away. Seeing him suddenly awake and alert but way too distracted to make words, plush lips parted like he wants to say something but he’s forgotten how… it’s a power Yunho’s not going to grow tired of any time soon. 

His bright eyes find Yunho’s at last, and he leans forward to meet him with a kiss again. At first it’s the same sweet, welcome home kiss as before, but then his tongue flicks lightly across Yunho’s lips and he lets Mingi lick into his mouth, hungry to get closer. The kiss gets wetter, deeper, and he feels his tiredness drop away, just like that. Something to do with the way his heart rate kicks up at the soft, intense way Mingi kisses him. He knots a hand in the soft cloth of the sleeping shirt to pull him closer, feels the lean muscle under his knuckles, sighs into Mingi’s mouth, he can’t help it, he’s fucking weak. In response, Mingi’s hand comes up to stroke Yunho’s chest, and the brush of a thumb across his nipple, a leisurely chafing, makes him shiver.

“You’re distracting me.” Mingi pulls far enough away to fix him with dark, narrowed eyes. His thumb keeps up its unhurried torment, back and forth. “Turn over. I want you on your stomach.”

Normally, that tone would make him argue on principle, and maybe Mingi sees something in his eyes, because he just grins and gives Yunho’s chest a light, stinging flick. His voice is a low drawl, pitched soft just for him. “Come on, dumbass, it’s for your own good. You look like shit.” He punctuates each word with a teasing, nipping kiss – “Impossibly – gorgeous – shit. Stop smiling at me like that, I forget what I’m doing. Turn over.” He waves the bottle of oil at him. “Wanna make you feel better.”

Yunho’s got a couple of other ideas that would make him feel _so_ much better, and the oil would still come in handy, bonus! but as he turns reluctantly, lowering himself down to lie on the mattress with his head on his arms, it feels like maybe Mingi was right after all. He can feel the aftermath of the ghost hunt clamoring in every knot in his muscles. 

It’s not just the tension of having to crawl under the building, all six foot of him crammed into the crawl space and having to work his way over the earth floor until he was under the right place. It’s the fear and confusion the ghost carried with him, lodging inside him and knotting him up. Bird’s sent him on his way to somewhere safe now, but the echoes of his fear are still trapped in Yunho. 

He hears the soft suction of the cork leaving the bottle, and the sticky sounds of Mingi spreading the oil across his hands. Then his long fingers start to move across Yunho’s back, cool at first but warming as the oil warms. Yunho trembles at the sensation, making a small moan of pleasure _oh gods yes_ that he belatedly tries to muffle against his arm. He hears Mingi’s soft laugh behind him.

“You’re so _easy_ , seriously, I’m embarrassed for you right now.”

“Shut up, asshole,” he murmurs into his arm. “Just keep doing that. Oh, gods, yes, _that_.”

He can feel the strength and the patience in those fingers, feel the way they chase away the tension. Mingi makes slow sweeps of his hands over the long muscles of Yunho’s back, sending ripples of cool pleasure all the way across his shoulders and down his arms. Thumbs press into the dip along his spine, smoothing everything away. It’s a crime, how good he is at this.

“Tell me about the hunt, if you want.” Mingi’s voice is quiet, absorbed in the work he’s doing. He flattens his hands across Yunho’s shoulder blades and presses his thumbs underneath, running back and forth in arcs. The pressure sets off pain, but it’s good pain, the pain of tension letting go. Like the last shreds of the ghost are going too, chased away by the warmth of Mingi’s hands stroking across his skin.

“Nothing to tell.” His work gets to him sometimes, but he doesn’t want to bring that sadness back here by talking about it. It doesn’t help, only makes it more real, brings it into this cosy room with them when he’d rather leave it at the door with his mucky clothes. “Just feels like sometimes, what I see, all those feelings, they kinda get stuck inside me.” He sighs, knowing he’s not making sense. “Sorry, that sounds stupid.”

There’s a brief sting as Mingi slaps his ass lightly. “It’s not stupid, idiot.” He feels the mattress dip beneath Mingi as he leans down and kisses the place he’s slapped, gives it a thoughtful nip, kisses it again. 

_And I’m the distraction. Great hells._

His hand resumes a steady stroking across the small of Yunho’s back. “No, I get it. Even though they’re not your feelings, and they didn’t happen to you, they’re still hard to shift.” There’s a brief pause in the rhythm of the massage. “Kinda makes it worse if they’re not your feelings to begin with.”

Yunho’s just awake enough to sense that he’s treading on some kind of new territory here, enough to make him cautious. Mingi doesn’t see auras and he doesn’t hunt ghosts, but that’s the voice of some sort of experience talking, he’d bet on it. It’s shot through with the things he doesn’t know about Mingi’s past, for all that they grew up together. 

He wants to roll over so he can look at him, but that’s one way to kill the flow of words, for sure. Also, it’s probably going to be _distracting_ that he’s half hard already from the kissing earlier, and the feel of Mingi’s hands all over him and yeah, also that nip on the ass and the way the pressure of the massage has been grinding him repeatedly into the mattress in an infuriatingly slow rhythm. He’s simple at heart. His brain might still be grappling with all the big feelings left over after a hunt, but his body’s telling him it’s a hundred percent good to move on already.

But Mingi doesn’t talk about himself, or hardly ever. And that’s fine, everyone’s got secrets, but seems like this is something he wants to share. Maybe needs to share.

“Why is it, that it’s worse when it’s not your feelings?” He keeps his voice casual as he can, trying not to chase the moment away. Mingi trails his fingertips down the length of his spine, raising shivers. For a moment Yunho doesn’t think he’s going to answer. 

“You can’t prepare yourself for it,” he says at last. His voice is rough, and again Yunho wishes he could see his face, or his aura. “You don’t know what to expect, because it’s not your memory. You just know it’s going to be bad. So you’re waiting for that. Every second, that’s what you’re waiting for.”

He doesn’t know what this is about, but he does know who’s there behind this. There’s only one person in their past who made a weapon out of memories like that, memories of pain and fear.

“This is the Old King?” 

“Yeah.”

“Royal nectar,” he says, feeling his way carefully. “It shows you your own memories, though. Not other people’s.”

Mingi runs his fingers back up Yunho’s spine and settles them around the back of his neck, starts to rub where the back of his hair hits. His hand is gentle, compared to the more complex emotions in his voice. 

“Yeah. But Jaehan was a collector. And he found a way to share his collection. He had us picking through that shit for secrets he could use.” 

Mingi’s running his hands across Yunho’s head now, scrawling patterns across his scalp, carding through his hair. The rhythmic rasp of his fingers is soothing, hypnotic, a complete disconnect from his words. He’s getting oil in Yunho’s hair, but he doesn’t want to do anything that might stop Mingi if this is something he wants Yunho to understand. 

He tries to imagine what that would have been like for him. Yunho’s job, the stuff he picks up from ghosts, it’s a choice and he knows at the end of the day he’s helping. Being dropped headfirst into that pain and suffering, not to have chosen that, never knowing if it was helping anyone, not knowing if it was doing anything more than wrecking his head? 

If the Old King wasn’t dead, Yunho would have found a way to kill him. He knows it as a cold sober fact. It’s not the first time he’s had that thought.

Mingi sighs, taps his fingers on Yunho’s skull as if he’s trying to dislodge his own thoughts. “It’s okay, it’s done. The memories, the collection, it’s all gone now. It’s just, I get what you mean. Sometimes things stick around. Other people’s shit, it gets caught up in your head.”

Yunho waits for a moment, but it sounds like maybe he’s done with what he wanted to say.

He reaches up to hold Mingi’s wrist and stop him stroking through his hair, rolls over to lean up on one elbow. Mingi’s unsmiling face is still caught up in memories, gaze far away, intent on the bad old past. He’s chewing on his lip, that habit he’s never lost when he’s stressed or fearful. Yunho hasn't worked out what Mingi needs from him most at times like this, but being close seems to help a little. He presses Mingi’s hand to his cheek, covers it with his own hand. 

_You’re here. You’re safe. You’re loved, you’re so so fucking loved. So wanted._

That’s what he wants to tell him. But Mingi’s resistant to hearing it, especially when the past has risen up and caught him by the throat. 

“You help me, you know?” he says softly, rubbing his thumb over Mingi’s hand. “Whenever you touch me. Your aura, your hands on me. It’s like…”

“The world just goes away?” Mingi half sings it like it’s a badly written love song, a flat look of cynicism in his eyes. He’s looking at him, though. He’s wary, but he’s looking. Every so often, these moments seem to rise up between them like a wall. He knows by now that it’s not about him; it’s how Mingi deals with the shit in his head. It’s aimed at himself, more than Yunho. Kinda makes it hard sometimes for him to say what he really means though, without running into that defensive shell. 

“It’s like the _ghosts_ go away.”

Not going to stop him trying, though.

_I want to be that person for you, too. Make your ghosts begone, and shit. Still figuring out how, is all._

He turns his head to kiss the heel of Mingi’s hand, licks at the smear of oil he picks up on his lips. Gazes up at him, meeting that spiky cynicism head-on.

“Kissing my ass helps too,” he offers, with his best faux-innocent smile and a flutter of eyelashes. “You can keep doing that.” 

He makes as if to turn over but Mingi pulls him back so they’re facing each other again. The warmth is gradually coming back into his face; those wide set eyes losing their distant chill, the corners of his lips quirking up in the smallest of smiles. He runs a hand into Yunho’s hair and takes a grip just hard enough to hold him there, leans down to capture Yunho’s mouth in a slow kiss, licking at the oil he finds, drawing his lower lip in to suck at it. Well, he’s surely thorough. He’s thorough enough to leave Yunho breathless, slightly dizzy with wanting. 

Their lips separate with a small noise and Yunho takes the momentary breathing space to tangle his fingers in the sleeping shirt. “Get my shirt off, dumbass. Too many clothes.” Mingi laughs and tugs the shirt off, gets stuck part way, emerges with his hair even more disordered and his mouth swollen and pink from kisses. He’s such a dork, when you get him away from his fancy clothes and glamours. 

A dork with a long, lean body, tapering down from his wide shoulders to the narrowest of hips; it’s ridiculous how elegant he looks with his clothes off, like some sort of work of art reclining on his bed. Yunho gets so distracted by the shape of him, the golden tone of his skin all laid bare for him to touch and taste and sink into, that he almost forgets that this is Mingi, _his_ Mingi, his idiot friend since forever. The same friend who’s given him shit, got him in trouble and saved his life, danced with him and abandoned him and whose aura twines through his like they were made for each other.

He lets his second sight in for just a moment to watch the colours wash around them, the bright and the dark threads of their combined auras surrounding them. But Mingi’s never going to be able to see it, not the way he can, even though Mingi’s the one who needs to see it the most; the way they fit together perfectly, imperfections and all. The way they’re a home for each other, wherever they are.

So he lets the sight slide away and pulls him down into his arms. There are always other ways to help him see it, if he’s patient, if Hivesong lets him keep her treasured son, the one she seems to love to hate. If his luck holds, and so far? Well, so far it’s holding.

“Apple turnover’s getting cold,” says Mingi, wrapping the blankets around both of them. He nuzzles up against Yunho, nose just brushing his, smiling eyes fully awake, back now from whatever distances he’s been travelling into the past. “Want some breakfast?”

“Want _you_.” He runs the numbers in his head, even as Mingi makes a wordless noise of approval and rolls him onto his back, ducking his head to press a hungry, open-mouthed line of kisses down Yunho’s throat. They might still have enough time before the shop opens, and if not?

This time, it’s Mingi’s turn to apologise.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always for taking the time to read, without readers we’re kinda just talking to ourselves :))) Yes, I’m continuing my mission to have every member of skz make a cameo in this series (halfway there now)!
> 
> Please feel free to come talk to me on twt (@nelliedae) about ateez, writing or how much you’re missing mingi (because SAME)


End file.
